If you love the frenetic rhythms and jagged edges of punk rock, you’ll enjoy
American Idiot.

The adaptation by director Michael Mayer and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong lacks depth and
coherence, but the 90-minute one-act works hard to make up for those shortcomings with a feisty
attitude and rock-concert intensity.

Inspired by the Green Day album and other songs that celebrate — or mourn — alienated youth in
post-9/11 America, the 21st-century rock musical has extraordinary energy. The electric staging,
however, tends to dissipate amid all the noise, blinding lights, TV projections and young-adult
cliches.

Alex Nee is convincing as Johnny, who, after moving to the big city falls in love with drugs and
lost soul Whatsername (Alyssa DiPalma).

Saddled with the most static role, Casey O’Farrell lives down to low expectations as
underachiever Will — at home on the couch watching television with pregnant girlfriend Heather
(Kennedy Caughell).At the Tuesday opening in the Palace Theatre, O’Farrell sang and played a guitar
well.

Tunny (Thomas Hettrick), meanwhile, is hypnotized by media-driven images of patriotism after
9/11, joins the Army and is sent to Iraq.

When
Idiot goes to war, it briefly transcends cliches and achieves a dreamlike peak in the
Extraordinary Girl sequence
, as a highly medicated Tunny soars above a military hospital in an aerial fantasy with a
woman in a burqa.

Backed by a lively six-member onstage band, the 20-member cast whips through the
percussion-driven songs with manic intensity.

Among the few songs that slow down to allow subtle feelings to shine through:
Boulevard of Broken Dreams, with lovely harmonies shared by Nee, DiPalma and Hettrick;
Know Your Enemy, with Trent Saunders’ vivid drug pusher, St. Jimmy, boosting Nee and O’F
arrell; and
Give Me Novacaine, passionately sung by O’Farrell.

Suggested for mature audiences because of frequent extreme profanity and partial nudity,
American Idiot falls short of the first rank of rock musicals.

Burdened by a weak book and a best-selling but mostly nontheatrical score, it lacks the
memorable melodies and relative clarity of
Hair,
Rent,
Spring Awakening and
Tommy while covering much of the same territory to lesser effect.